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Mourning with Antigone: Civil War and Public Mourning in Patricia Ariza’s Antígona

Katie Billotte Royal Holloway College: University of London

or a brief moment it appeared that the 2010 Colombian presidential election would be

nothing short of revolutionary. It began predictably enough. When the country whose

name is often perceived as synonymous with civil war and drug trafficking held congressional

elections on the 14 March 2010, the results indicated that there was no reason to doubt that

conservative forces within the country would continue to dominate the nation’s political

scene. This meant that Juan Manuel Santos, the minister of defence, was well-positioned to

become the country’s next head of state. What not even the most acute political observer

could have expected was that only a few months later the mayor of Bogotá, Antanas Mockus,

running under the banner of Colombia’s newly formed Green Party, would become a serious

contender in the presidential race. When the 20th June run-off election became a contest

between Santos and Mockus, many began to say that a new way of doing politics was coming

to the troubled nation.

The historic election of a ‘Green’ head of state in Colombia was, however, not to be.

Mockus was soundly defeated by Santos, who won by a margin of almost three to one

(Brodzinsky 2010). Santos’ victory was seen by many as an endorsement of the hard line

policies against drug cartels and Marxist guerrillas pursued by the Colombian government

(with the help of significant U.S. aid) under Santos’ predecessor, Álvaro Uribe.1 These same

reports praised how effective Uribe’s policies had been in reducing the amount of violence in

the country. What went widely unmentioned is the continued violence in Colombia

perpetrated by government-backed paramilitaries as well as other grave human rights. A

report by Amnesty International, submitted to the U.N.’s Human Rights Commission

immediately prior to the election, details the troubling situation in Colombia. Along with

1 Since 2000, most U.S. aid to Colombia has come through a scheme known as Plan Colombia. Plan Colombia was conceived in 1998 during a meeting between the then-U.S. president Bill Clinton and the then-Colombian president Andres Pastrana. Uribe has continued to pursue the policies laid out in Plan Colombia and has often been even more ‘pro-active’ in his military pursuit of rebels. While the plan does include aid to areas outside of defense, approximately 68% of the money is spent on military supplies and activities. This has led many critics to note that the scheme does little to address the underlying inequities in Colombian society which fuel both the drug trade and support for left-wing rebels. Moreover, increasing amounts of evidence suggest that Plan Colombia has not only been ineffective in reducing drug-trafficking, it might also actually be financing the drug lords. See Ballvé 2009.

F

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describing the activities of drug lords and anti-government guerrillas, the report outlines a

variety of illegal activities carried out by the Colombian government against human rights

defenders and other activists:

A climate of hostility towards human rights defenders and other activists exacerbates the ongoing serious situation they face. Such hostility has been fomented by the Government, which appears to perceive human rights and security as mutually exclusive. Senior Government and state officials often seek to equate human rights work with support for the guerrillas or terrorism. Such a systematic, high-profile and public stigmatization has given a powerful incentive to those wishing to threaten and physically harm human rights defenders. (Amnesty International 2010)

Patricia Ariza, the author of the play referenced in this essay, is one of the activists who

have been targeted by the Colombian regime. Ariza’s work has always been overwhelmingly

political in nature, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that she has both run foul of the

Colombian regime and been drawn to Antigone. Antígona certainly represents an instance

where it is difficult to separate Ariza’s theatre from her politics. She began her work on

Antígona after meeting rural women in the war-torn province of Urába, one of the Colombian

regions most affected by the country’s ongoing turmoil.2 The lives of the women Ariza met in

Urába shared a tragic parallel with the story of Antigone. Many of their male relatives had

been killed in a recent bout of fighting, and they had been prevented from burying the dead

men by governmental decree since the dead men were suspected rebels (Pinzón 2006). After

meeting these women, Ariza spent nearly eight years working on Antígona which premiered

in Bogotá in the summer of 2006 at La Calendaría, the theatre which Ariza helped to found

almost three decades ago.

The play was produced as part of the Magdalena Project, an international theatre

initiative that seeks to support female playwrights engaged in innovative and socially relevant

work. It is difficult to doubt that Ariza’s play is indeed innovative as she has altered the play’s

structure to include three Antigones and two Ismenes, a change which (if nothing else) is very

inventive indeed. However, the question of relevance is, as always, much harder to define.

Certainly, many of the questions raised by the story of Antigone are questions which continue

to be asked. Some of these questions are particularly urgent in communities touched by

widespread violence and long term civil conflict, places such as Colombia. First among these

2 As much an activist as a playwright, Ariza has made similar trips throughout her career as part of her work in support of left-wing causes. It is important to note that while Ariza has never made a secret of her left-wing sympathies, she has long denied any connection with Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), the most active of Colombia’s Marxist rebels. Several government investigations have attempted to tie her to the group, but they have produced no conclusive evidence. The Public Prosecutor now denies that Ariza was ever investigated by the antiterrorism unit. (International PEN 2009).

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questions are those which centre on issues of mourning and violence and the relationship

between the two.

It is important, before we continue, to take a moment to understand what exactly is meant

by the term mourning. Mourning is not, as I will discuss it here, the same as grief. For our

purposes, mourning is a series of public acts which may or may not be connected to genuine

feelings of sorrow or loss. Mourning is not about for whom and how we actually grieve but

for whom and how we are supposed to grieve. In the words of Émile Durkheim, ‘Mourning is

not the spontaneous expression of individual emotions…it is a duty imposed by the group’

(Durkheim 1915: 397).3 I first became interested in the issue of mourning and its connection

to violence through Judith Butler’s 2004 book Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and

Violence. In it, Butler connects the politics of violence to the politics of mourning to

demonstrate not only that mourning is a political act (a point that is often overlooked), but

also that it is crucial to understanding why and how violence occurs. This study continues

Butler’s discussion through reflecting on the connection between violence and mourning as

they are presented in Sophocles’ Antigone and through examining how Ariza maintains and

adapts these connections in Antígona.

We begin with the portrayal of mourning and violence in Sophocles’ Antigone. Butler

asks in Precarious Life, ‘Who counts as human? Whose lives count as lives? And, finally,

What makes for a grievable life?’ (Butler 2004: 20; original emphasis). Perhaps more than the

relationship between the state and the individual or the responsibilities of kinship, these are

the matters at the heart of Antigone. Of course, all of these issues are interconnected. It is

worth noting that in an earlier monograph, tellingly entitled Antigone’s Claim, Butler is

concerned, amongst other things, with how the figure of Antigone relates to normative

notions of kinship. To ask, ‘Who is kin?’ is not entirely dissimilar from asking, ‘Who is

human?’ Both questions are concerned with the definition of the person as a relational

category and the answers to both questions rely, in large part, upon community consensus.

Moreover, issues of kinship, death, mourning, and violence are all deeply connected to

the body. When we ask who is human or how human beings are related to one another, we are

asking about what it means to have a body such as ours and what the possession of that body

means about our relationship to others with similar bodies. The body has, as Butler says, ‘an

invariably public dimension.’ (Butler 2004: 26). And nowhere is the public dimension of the

body clearer than in the rituals of mourning. Burial rituals are concerned with a body which is 3 Quoted by Davies (Davies 1997: 15).

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completely devoid of life and thus any personality, and yet the very nature of the customs

implies the unique personality of the lifeless body and affirms the connection between that

body and the life which once inhabited it. It is for this reason that there is such a close

connection between the worth granted to the individual and the amount of mourning afforded

to the corpse. In his 1997 book Death, Ritual, and Belief: The Rhetoric of Funeral Rites,

Douglas James Davis stresses the continuity between the living body and the corpse as a

fundamental feature of burial ritual, when he writes that through funeral rights, ‘[t]he identity

of the body is not extinguished, it is simply transformed and revealed in its new state.’ (Davis

1997: 14). If the corpse maintains its identity, then the treatment received by the corpse is

nothing other than the treatment received by the person who the corpse does not merely

represent but is. The plot of Antigone depends upon this association, since clearly Creon’s

decree to deny Polynices burial can only make sense if we accept an unbroken continuity

between the living and the dead body (something the characters within the play clearly do).

Note, for example, Creon’s reaction to the news of Polynices’ burial:

!"#$%&' (!$%#)µ*'#$+ ,+ $-$%./#0' 12%3!#&' 4-#"', 56#)+ 7µ8)29&'4+ '4&:+ !3%;6<' =>?$ 27'4?@µ4#4 24A .B' C2$9'<' 24A '"µ&3+ D)462$D*'; E #&:+ 242&:+ #)µ*'#4+ $F6&%G+ ?$&H+; &I2 16#)' (Ant. ll. 284–89)4

[Did the gods bury him with special honours for being/such a great benefactor to Thebes, a man who came here/to torch their column-ringed temples and all the rich offerings, /a man who came to destroy both their land and their laws? (Ant. 370)]

This supposition places the body at the centre of individual identity by asserting that the body

of an individual continues to be that individual even when every other defining characteristic

has been cut off from the body by death.

If the body is at the centre of identity, then Creon’s decision not to bury Polynices has

serious implications about Polynices’ identity. I would suggest that the denial of burial is an

implicit denial of full humanity. Burial rituals, like language and tool-making, are one of the

markers by which human beings are identified. This is why the presence of planned graves at

an archeologically site has been used by paleoanthropologists as an indication of the presence

of ‘modern humans’ (Davis 1997: 5). Thus by refusing Polynices’ burial, Creon is denying

him one of the principle signs of humanity. This is obviously an extreme measure, which is

why Creon must then legitimise his action by connecting his dehumanising treatment of

4 References accompanying quotations in Greek give the line numbers in Sophoclis Fabulae; those accompanying the English translations give the page number(s) in Three Theban Plays.

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Polynices in death with Polynices’ inhuman behaviour in life. Hence Creon describes

Polynices as isolated from and hostile toward his community. For Creon, Polynices’ rejection

of his authority has severed Polynices’ relationships within the community. This is because,

‘Creon defines the self in relation to others in a hierarchal and contractual fashion’ (Foley

2001: 184). If humanity is dependent upon having relationships to other human beings, and if,

in Creon’s view, Polynices has severed his human relationships, then it is possible to question

whether Polynices still deserves to be called human. To suggest that someone who alienates

himself from the community no longer qualifies as human is not an outlandish claim.

Aristotle would say as much in the Politics when he declared that man is an animal who lives

in a polis and that any man who should find himself without a polis is not a man at all but

instead a god or a beast.5

The view that human identities are fundamentally relational is also present elsewhere

within the play. Haemon tells his father that, ‘!"#$% &' ()*µ+% ,- ./ &0% 1)234% µ5-3% [Alone

in a desert, you would make a perfect ruler]’ (Ant. l. 739; Ant. 188). Of course, Haemon is

implying that a ruler alone in a desert is no sort of ruler at all, since a ruler is only a ruler

inasmuch as he has subjects over whom he can rule. This is part of the same paradigm of

community-based identity which says that a human being without a polis is not a proper

human being. Thus it is possible to say that the view of human identity advanced by Aristotle

is present in the Antigone. Consequently, in alienating himself from his polis, Polynices has

placed into question the status of his humanity. To deny him burial merely acknowledges and

perpetuates his non-human status. Conversely, in burying her brother Antigone not only

fulfils her role as a dutiful sister: she reasserts her brother’s humanity.

By rebutting attempts to deny her brother’s humanity and thereby delegitimising the

decision to deny him burial, Antigone also calls into question the legitimacy of the violence

which brought about his death. That it is necessary to dehumanise an individual in order to

perpetuate violence against him or her is an oft-repeated truism; the mechanism by which this

occurs is less often discussed. In Precarious Lives, Butler suggests one possible reason why

individuals and/or groups of individuals who have been dehumanised rhetorically are thus

rendered as potential targets of violence:

If violence is done against those who are unreal, then, from the perspective of violence, it fails to injure or negate those lives since those lives are already negated. But they have a strange

5 (Pol.I.1253a): 674 8 1-9):;3% <=.>4 ;3#474!?- @A3-, !"B 8 1;3#4% C4D <=.4- !"B 3E C4D 7=2+- F734 <"G#5% (.74-, H !)>I77:- H 1-9):;3% [And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state is either above humanity or below it]’ (Aristotle 2008: 28)

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way of remaining animated and so must be negated again (and again). They cannot be mourned because they are always already lost or, rather, never ‘were’, and they must be killed, since they seem to live on, stubbornly, in this state of deadness. (Butler 2004: 20)

It is possible to see this paradigm employed in Antigone not only in Polynices’ death and

subsequent non-burial but also in Antigone’s own death sentence. Haemon warns his father

against doing violence to Antigone by noting that, ‘!"#$%&'( )*+(, [The city mourns]’ (Ant. l.

694; Ant. 186) for Antigone. If Antigone is, to borrow Butler’s word, grievable, then she is

shielded from violence since those who should be mourned cannot legitimately be the victims

of violence.

Antigone, of course, does not accept that her brother should have been killed (except in

the sense that she accepts that they are both from a cursed bloodline), and consequently she

refuses to believe he should be unburied. She sees herself as obliged to correct this wrong,

because he is her brother. She does not, however, believe that she would have a similar

obligation were she to share any other bond with him, a point made clear in the following

speech: -. /0$ )-&1 -2&1 34, %5 &67484 µ9&:$ ;<=4, -2&1 %5 )*>(, µ-( 7'&?'4@4 A&97%&-, BCD )-+(&E4 &*4"1 F4 G$*µ:4 )*4-4. (Ant. ll. 905–07)

[And yet had I become a mother/of children, if a husband had died and lain rotting,/above the ground, I never would have taken up such a burden/against the will of the people. (Ant. 194–95]

Such a disclaimer seems strange to our modern ears. This is, for example, clearly not a

sentiment shared by the women who inspired Patricia Ariza to undertake an adaptation of

Antigone. In fact, this is the very sort of statement which highlights the often deep chasms

between the ancient world and our own. An adaptation of any ancient work must bridge these

gaps if it is to be effective and meaningful within its own context. For this reason, I now turn

to how the Sophoclean discussion of mourning and violence is translated in Ariza’s

adaptation.

In order to do this, we must look at the structural differences between the two plays.

There are many significant and telling ways in which Ariza departs from Sophocles. The most

obvious of these differences I have mentioned earlier in passing. In Ariza’s adaptation there

are three Antigones and two Ismenes on stage. But not only does Ariza create multiple

incarnations of the characters who are already in Sophocles’ play, she also adds additional

characters who are not present in the original. Polynices, Eteocles, Oedipus, and the Furies all

add their voices to Antígona. Since the Chorus is still present, the result is a much larger cast

than in Sophocles’ original.

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The most immediate consequence of this expanded cast is that there are many more

perspectives involved in the debate over whether or not Polynices should be buried. The dead

and the living, the mortal and the immortal are all consulted on the issue of who should be

mourned and how. In doing this they also, as we have discussed earlier, implicitly offer an

opinion on who might legitimately be the subject of violence. Jocasta is the only member of

Oedipus’ original household who does not make an appearance at what one might think of as

a very strange family reunion. I think that her absence can be explained if we understand

Antígona, as I am suggesting, as a meditation upon mourning, violence, and their

consequences.

The absence of Jocasta is particularly striking when one considers the significant role

which organisations formed by mothers have played in anti-violence movements throughout

Latin America. La Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina is the most well-known

of these organisations, but similar organisations and movements have appeared in many other

countries throughout the region, including Colombia. These mothers’ organisations have been

central in organising the public mourning of those killed over the last century in various

conflicts throughout Central and South America and have consequently also been one of the

principal voices in calls to end the violence. A large part of the activism of such groups has

centred on the idea that private grief is simply insufficient. The public act of mourning must

occur for deaths, and the lives that preceded them, to have any real significance. Why, then, is

Jocasta excluded from Antígona when so many others are included? I would suggest that

Jocasta’s exclusion from Ariza’s extended cast is linked to the play’s thematic focus on

mourning and violence. If Sophocles’ Antigone and consequently Ariza’s Antígona are

concerned principally with questions surrounding mourning and violence, namely who is

worthy of mourning and who is worthy of violence, then the appearance of Jocasta in

Antígona would undermine the play’s ability to ask those questions. This is particularly true

in the Latin American context where mothers have routinely organised and entered into the

public debate explicitly in order to humanise the victims of political violence through

mourning and thus to prevent further individuals from being victimised. For example, in

Scene I Ismene 2 says, ‘Estuve llorando en silencio a nuestros hermanos [I have been crying

in silence for our brothers]’ (Ariza 2006).6 In the context of decades of mourning-based

activism by mothers, one would expect such a statement to be challenged by any mother in

6 All translations from Spanish are by the author of this article.

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the play. This, however, would undermine the debate between the Ismenes and the Antigones

which is so central to the play’s activist character.

While Jocasta is completely absent from the stage, Polynices is nearly so. He appears

only briefly in Scene VII, summoned from the underworld by Tiresias and the Furies.

Considering the number of additional characters in Ariza’s script and that Polynices is at the

heart of plot, the brevity of his stage time is notable. Through the very short scene, Polynices

remains on the periphery in every possible way which serves to reinforce the status which has

permitted his violent and unmarked death. Polynices never speaks with his sister or uncle. He

is only able only to communicate with Tiresias, the Furies, and the Chorus—all also marginal

and marginalised figures. He tells them, ‘Yo era el merecedor del trono por ser el de más edad

[I was worthy of the throne, being the oldest] (Ibid). Yet this is the only defence he offers up

for his inheritance or for his life. His final utterance, a piercing call for his sister, is perhaps

the strongest assertion he makes for his right to belong still to the protected community of

humankind. By that scream, he reasserts the final link he has with another person and this

becomes his most defiant protest of his death and postmortem exposure.

But Polynices is not the only brother who speaks. Eteocles too appears in the Ariza’s

adaptation. What is interesting is that in Antígona the most condemning word about Polynices

come from the mouth of Eteocles:

¡Silencio! ¡Silencio! No es conveniente ya llorar ni gemir. Polinices no tenía la virgen de la justicia en su escudo y tampoco escrúpulos en su corazón. Maltrató a su patria y por eso mereció la muerte de mi propia mano. Yo mismo me entregué al combate defendiendo el derecho al trono. Fue en franca y limpia lid, rey contra rey, enemigo contra enemigo, hermano contra hermano. (Ibid)

[Silence! Silence! It is neither appropriate to mourn nor wail. Polynices did not have the virgin of justice on his shield nor scruples in his heart. He abused his country and therefore deserved death at my hand. I threw myself into the fight to defend right and the throne. It was fair and square, a king against a king, an enemy against an enemy, a brother against a brother.]

Perhaps it is not surprising that in a play where Eteocles is allowed to speak that he should be

the one who most virulently justifies the way Polynices was treated. He must deny his

humanity, legitimise the violence done to him and confirm that he should go unburied,

because when he is present it is Eteocles who has the most to justify.

Despite these structural differences, the basic paradigms put forward in Ariza’s play

around violence and mourning remain virtually identical to Sophocles’. Jocasta’s notable

absence, Polynices’ brief and marginalised appearance, Eteocles’ harsh condemnation; these

are all aimed at demonstrating how Polynices has fallen outside the scope of the human

community and therefore was both a legitimate target of violence and unworthy of burial.

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Antigone’s defiance therefore in both renditions of the play lies in her refusal to accept that

her brother was anything less than human, or rather, that any human being can behave in such

a way as lose his or her ‘human’ status. Antigone’s crusade is therefore the crusade of human

rights and anti-violence activists the world over. She stands as a symbol, not just of defiance

against the arbitrary exercise of power by the state, but against any attempt to strip any

individual of his or her full humanity both in life and in death.

Most certainly in Colombia, where generations have grown up under the threat of

violence and in the shadow of the mourned and the unburied, it is difficult to do anything that

is not in some way touched by the long shadow of that violence. Colombia is also a nation

that is still torn apart into multiple warring factions and haunted by tyranny. These realities

seem particularly hard to escape when staging any version of Antigone since Antigone has

traditionally been understood to be about the relationship between the virtuous individual and

the tyrant. It is, of course, important and necessary to question how an individual should

respond in the face of tyranny, but I think that the (for lack of a better word) political

questions which the Antigone asks extend much deeper than this. Antigone is asking not just

how we should respond to violence but why that violence occurs in the first place. By looking

at the dynamics of mourning, Antigone is questioning the legitimacy of violence.

These are questions one cannot help but ask when looking at the recent history of

Colombia and they also are unavoidably part of Antigone. The building of a sound theoretical

connection between mourning and violence has implications not only for the critical study of

literature concerned with either or both but also for the numerous instances in which

mourning is used as a tool for activism. Ultimately, this is the role which Ariza’s Antígona is

playing as well. While the women with whom Ariza met in Urába may have been denied the

opportunity to mourn the men they loved in a conventional way, Ariza has created through

Antígona an alternative means of public mourning for them and in doing so she has created a

wider dialogue about the meaning of their deaths and the deaths of others like them.

At the end of Antigone, Creon is punished for his impiety by the death of his son. He is

not immune from the violence he has allowed to be inflicted on others. But perhaps the best

warning to us comes from Tiresia at the end of Ariza’s Antígona:

Ciudadanos de Tebas, salgan ya de de sus casas y de sus guaridas, descorran el velo que les ciega la vista, Su silencio ha sido el mayor cómplice de la tragedia. Salgan, sé que están ahí, escondidos. Salgan y vengan a ver de una vez por todas las ruinas de la guerra. (ibid)

[Citizens of Thebes! Come out from your houses and your abodes! Lift the veil that blinds your sight! Your silence has been this tragedy’s greatest accomplice. Come out! I know you are hidden there! Come out and see the ruins of war once and for all.]

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Bibliography

Primary Texts

Aristotle, ‘Politics’ in De Arte Poetica Liber, ed. by Rudolf Kassel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993 Aristotle, Politics, no trans., facsimile of 1905 edn (New York: Cosimo, 2008) Ariza, Patricia, Antígona. Unpublished Script. Bogatá, 2006 Sophocles, ‘Antigone’ in Sophocles’ Three Theban Plays, trans. by Peter Constantine (New York: Barnes and

Noble Classics, 2007), pp. 159–212 Sophoclis Fabulae ed. by Hugh Lloyd-Jones and N.G. Wilson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)

Secondary Texts

Ballvé, Teo. ‘The Dark Side of Plan Colombia’ in The Nation 15 June 2009 <<http://www.thenation.com/article/dark-side-plan-colombia?page=0,0>> [accessed 21 July 2010].

Brodzinsky, Sibylla. ‘Juan Manuel Santos wins Colombian Presidential Election’ in guardian.co.uk. 21 June 2010 <<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/21/juan-manuel-santos-colombia-president>> [accessed 20 July 2010]

Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004) Davis, Douglas James, Death, Rituals, and Belief: The Rhetoric of Funeral Rites (London: Cassell, 1997) Durkheim, Émile, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1915) Foley, Helen, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy Princeton, New Jersey & (Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press,

2001) International PEN, Women writers under attack in Latin America. 5 March 2009,

<<http://www.internationalpen.org.uk/go/news/women-writers-under-attack-in-latin-america>> [accessed 21 July 2010]

Pinzón, Wílmar Cabrera. ‘Ariza: ‘Repetirnos Es Morir’, El Tiempo 14 June 2006 <<http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/MAM-2064718>> [accessed 21 July 2010]

The Human Rights Situation in Colombia: Amnesty International written statement to the thirteenth session of the UN Human Rights Council (1–26 March 2010) AI Index: AMR 23/005/2010, 16 February 2010, <<http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR23/005/en/8abbee9d-726e-4b33-b928-1174a15833f4/amr230052010en.pdf.>> [accessed 15 March 2010].

Further discussions of some of the issues raised in this article will be found in:

Amid Our Troubles: Irish Versions of Greek Tragedy, ed. by Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton (London: Methuen, 2002)

Butler, Judith. Antigone's Claim: Kinship between Life and Death (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane, ‘Assumptions and the Creation of Meaning: Reading Sophocles’ Antigone’,

Journal of Hellenic Studies, 109 (1989), 134–48 Steiner, George. Antigones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)